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Sat, 28 Mar 2015 01:55:24 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory—The Case for U.S.-Iranian Rapprochement That Obama Must Still Make: Leveretts in The National Interesthttp://goingtotehran.com/snatching-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory-the-case-for-u-s-iranian-rapprochement-that-obama-must-still-make-leveretts-in-the-national-interest
http://goingtotehran.com/snatching-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory-the-case-for-u-s-iranian-rapprochement-that-obama-must-still-make-leveretts-in-the-national-interest#commentsSat, 28 Mar 2015 01:55:24 +0000Hillary Mann Leveretthttp://goingtotehran.com/?p=1153As the Iran nuclear talks reach a critical juncture and Saudi Arabia invades yet another neighboring in its increasingly desperate efforts to contain the Islamic Republic’s rising regional influence, The National Interest has published our latest article, “Busted Stuff: America’s Disastrous Iran Policy,” see here; we’ve also appended the text below. The piece explains how the Obama administration, because of its continuing unwillingness to engage the Islamic Republic as a truly rising power, risks turning a possible nuclear deal with Tehran—which should be the greatest triumph of American diplomacy since the U.S. opening to China in the 1970s—into something that actually “ends up exacerbating America’s ongoing marginalization in the Middle East.”

As always, we encourage readers to post comments, Facebook likes, etc., both on this site and on The National Interest’s Web site.

Busted Stuff: America’s Disastrous Iran Policy

By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Stakes in the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 couldn’t be higher for the countries involved—especially for the United States. After nearly a decade and a half of disastrously self-damaging wars, “counter-terrorism campaigns,” and military occupations in the Middle East, the dysfunction and incoherence of U.S. policy is now on full display, from Iraq to Libya, Syria, and now Yemen. To recover, Washington must accept on-the-ground realities: U.S. efforts to dominate the region have failed and the Islamic Republic of Iran is now a rising power with which America must come to terms.

But President Obama has yet to explain why the United States—for its own interests, not as a favor to Iran, or simply because Americans are war-weary—needs rapprochement with the Islamic Republic. Absent such advocacy, his administration may still reach a nuclear deal with Iran. But it will lose the political fight at home over a new Iran policy, squandering the chance for a broader strategic opening with Tehran and locking the United States into increasingly steep strategic decline in the Middle East and globally.

Today, America cannot achieve any of its high-priority goals in the Middle East—e.g., combatting the Islamic State, forestalling another violent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, and resolving conflicts in Syria and Yemen—without better ties with Iran. Under any political order, Iran is a pivotal country, given its demographic and territorial size, its geostrategic location, its identity as a civilizational state with a history as long as China’s, and its hydrocarbon resources. But, under the Islamic Republic—which, since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, has worked to forge an indigenously-designed political system combining participatory politics and elections with elements of Islamic governance, and to pursue foreign policy independence—Iran enjoys a powerful legitimacy that bolsters its regional impact.

For too many Americans, thirty-five years of demonizing caricature mask an essential fact: the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the Middle East’s only successful participatory Islamist order, has been able to pursue an independent foreign policy that has steadily bolstered its influence in critical arenas across the Middle East. If America is to recover its strategic position, it must devise a fundamentally different relationship with this rising power. It must do so not only because of Iran’s unique importance, but also as a first step toward coming to terms with Middle Eastern Muslims’ manifest desire—reflected in polls and in electoral outcomes whenever they get to vote in a reasonably open way—to define their political futures in terms of participatory Islamism and foreign policy independence.

Ignoring these realities, the Obama administration treats a nuclear deal as, at most, a “nice to have” option. Obama rarely identifies potential U.S. gains from realigning relations with Iran; instead, he stresses how Washington is providing Tehran with an “opportunity” to “benefit from rejoining the international community.”

It’s probably never a good idea to try selling a politically controversial diplomatic initiative by stressing the initiative’s presumptive benefits for the other side. To the extent that the Obama administration has touched on potential upsides for the United States, it has done so in narrowly technical terms, positing that a multilateral agreement is the most cost-effective way to manage theoretical proliferation risks associated with Iran enriching uranium under international safeguards (risks posed by uranium enrichment in any country).

This restricted focus opens U.S. diplomacy up to three major problems. First, it conditions U.S. demands on Tehran with no grounding in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or other aspects of international law. This may seem useful to show constituencies in the United States and allied countries that the Obama administration is putting Iran’s nuclear capabilities in a very tight “box”—e.g., by requiring the dismantling of an arbitrarily large number of Iranian centrifuges or refusing to lift UN Security Council sanctions on Iran for years into the implementation of an agreement. But it also makes clear that America is not prepared to deal with the Islamic Republic as the legitimate representative of legitimate Iranian interests—the only basis for real rapprochement.

Second, a narrowly technical approach is vulnerable to criticism that it does not actually accomplish the goals its advocates set (criticism epitomized in Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s charge that diplomacy “doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb; it paves Iran’s path to the bomb”). In the 1970s, the Carter administration insisted that the SALT II agreements it had negotiated with the Soviet Union put meaningful limits on the growth of Moscow’s strategic arsenal. But this technical argument was trumped by more politically resonant claims that SALT II left an unreconstructed Soviet adversary with too much nuclear capability; ultimately, congressional opposition killed SALT II. If Obama does not make the case for a nuclear deal as a catalyst for broader (and strategically imperative) rapprochement with Tehran, he will face mounting political pushback against meeting U.S. commitments essential to implementing a deal.

Third, Obama’s posture makes it increasingly probable that the geopolitical benefits of diplomatically resolving the nuclear issue will accrue primarily not to the United States, but to China and Russia. It seems all too likely that the Obama administration will continue to resist packaging a nuclear deal as part of comprehensive, “Nixon to China” rapprochement with Tehran. It seems virtually certain that, under a deal, the administration will only commit to “waive” America’s Iran-related sanctions, for six months at a time, through the balance of Obama’s presidency. Indeed, senior administration officials told Congress last week that current sanctions legislation should stay on the books until a deal’s end, years from now, so that Washington can continue leveraging Tehran’s actions.

By contrast, even before a nuclear deal is concluded, Beijing and Moscow are laying the ground to deepen their already significant economic and strategic cooperation with Iran. (Both Chinese President Xi and Russian President Putin will visit Tehran this spring.) The Obama administration’s technically reductionist approach to Iran relations raises the risks that what should be the greatest triumph of American diplomacy since the U.S. opening to China in the 1970s will end up exacerbating America’s ongoing marginalization in the Middle East.

Appearing on RT’s CrossTalk, click on the video above or see here and (for YouTube) here, Hillary explored the anti-Muslim bias and even outright racism driving some aspects of the opposition to a prospective Iran nuclear deal here in the United States. (Her foil on this point was Fred Fleitz, former CIA analyst who established his neoconservative foreign policy credentials as chief of staff to John Bolton and Bob Joseph during their tenures as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.) Evaluating domestic political dynamics in Tehran and Washington vis-à-vis the P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran, Hillary says,

“I am not so concerned about the so-called ‘hardliners’ in Iran who may derail this deal. I think we’re dealing with an Iranian government that has been very clear-eyed about what it wants to get out of these negotiations and has focused on it very seriously. And they have the support of the Supreme Leader and others…

But I am very concerned on the American side here…My colleague [Fred Fleitz] used this language that the Obama Administration needed ‘adult supervision.’ You see that reflected in the [Republican senators’] letter, you see it in the commentary—some very insulting terms about President Obama himself, as if he’s not an adult, he’s a child. The letter supposedly warns the Iranians that any deal would just be a deal between Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei, as if the Iranians really had to worry about that. That line is directed toward the American people, to sow questions in a pernicious narrative here that maybe Obama is really sympathetic with ‘the ayatollahs,’ he’s really sympathetic with Islamists. And maybe he’s not really, exactly ‘American.’ We heard former [New York City] Mayor Giuliani make such comments about Obama, too, that maybe Obama doesn’t really love America. There’s always been an undercurrent here, since Obama started campaigning, and I think it’s rearing its ugly head again, now that the Republicans control both the House and the Senate.”

When Hillary asked Fleitz directly why he used language that Obama needs ‘adult supervision,’ he had no response. Elaborating on her critique, Hillary explains,

“There are two very pernicious narratives that have taken hold in Washington.

One…is what Prime Minister Netanyahu gave voice to when he spoke before Congress, which is that essentially all Islamists are brutal, bloody terrorists—that the Islamic Republic is the same thing as the Islamic State, equating all Islamists, regardless of what they’re doing, as bloody, brutal terrorists—and that we have no choice but to eliminate and then impose puppet regimes on them, so they’ll behave. That’s a very dangerous narrative for the United States, because it keeps our head in the sand, in defiance of reality that there are more than a billion Muslims in this world and we’re somehow going to have to come to terms with them—especially in the Middle East, where they’re seeking real foreign policy independence.

The other pernicious narrative that’s linked to this is an attempt to tie President Obama to that, personally.”

In a telling display of how anti-Muslim bias warps American discourse about Iran, Fleitz reacted to the moderator, Peter Lavelle, pointing out that Iran has a sovereign right—acknowledged in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—to enrich uranium with an emblematic declaration: “It shouldn’t have that right.” In response, Hillary notes,

“It’s really interesting, because this point that Iran ‘shouldn’t have that right’ really gets to the heart of this. There’s a group here in Washington who thinks that they should be able to pick and choose which countries can have which rights. And the nuclear issue is critically important there. It’s fine for them that Israel has nuclear weapons; it’s fine for them that India as an American friend has nuclear weapons…The problem that opponents have is they don’t like the Islamic Republic. And so people like Sen. Cotton and his supporters here, they’re fine with a deal with Iran—but not this Iran, not the Islamic Republic of Iran. They want it to be with a puppet regime in Iran that takes dictated terms from Washington. That’s just not going to happen, no matter how much people want it. That defies reality.”

Extending her analysis, Hillary underscores that “the real concern” of a prospective nuclear deal’s opponents is “the changing balance of power in the Middle Eastand, whether they like it or not, the changing balance of power around the world. The concern is not whether it’s 2, 200 or 2,000 centrifuges. The concern is the rise of Iran and what that means in the Middle East. The concern is the rise of Russia, the rise of China, and what that means for international politics. I think that, for all of its flaws, the Obama administration is trying to navigate those reality-based changes in the balance of power, in the Middle East and around the world. And this deal will focus the United States on those necessary correctives in our own foreign policy—to get us off the track of trying to impose military dominance all over the Middle East and around the world. That’s the importance of this agreement. But President Obama hasn’t actually explained that to the American people, and therefore he opens the window for all of these various kinds of insulting tactics against his policies.”

Interestingly, as negotiators from the P5+1 and Iran appear to be getting close to agreement on key substantive aspects of a prospective nuclear deal, implementation—mainly on the U.S. side, is emerging as an ever more salient challenge. In this regard, Hillary points out that Iran has been careful not to put “all their eggs in the American basket. They have working constructive partnerships with Russia, China, European countries. And I think they will focus on the UN and the UN Security Council to give them the international security guarantees required since the United States may not be able to live up to its word,” in terms of actually implementing a deal.

Hillary appeared on Democracy Now! to discuss the “open letter” signed by forty-seven Republican senators to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, the Iranian nuclear issue more broadly, and what is really at stake for the United States as it approaches a potentially important inflection point in the trajectory of U.S.-Iranian relations. To see the segment, click here, on the embedded video above, or here (for YouTube).

Hillary explains the “reckless” and “dangerous” impact of the GOP letter—in terms of American constitutionalism and foreign policy practice, certainly, but even more profoundly in terms of America’s strategic interests. Critically, she takes President Obama to task for having refrained from making “the case, the strategic case, to the American people why a fundamentally different relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran is in America’s interest—not that we’re doing Iran a favor to welcome them back into the international community, instead that this is critically important for the United States, that after a decade of disastrous wars in the Middle East, we need a fundamentally different policy, and that starts with a fundamentally different relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Hillary was interviewed by Democracy Now! host/executive producer Amy Goodman and co-anchor/producer Nermeen Shaikh; The Nation’s Ali Gharib, who just published a profile of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), the organizer of the aforementioned open letter, also appears. The transcript is here and appended below.

Nermeen Shaikh: We begin today’s show looking at the fallout from the open letter sent earlier this week by Republican lawmakers warning Iran against a nuclear deal with the U.S. On Monday, a group of 47 Republican senators released the letter, which reads in part, quote, “we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei.” Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, dismissed the letter as propaganda.

Mohammad Javad Zarif [translated]: This is a propaganda ploy and bears no legal value. This shows how worried one group is. There is no agreement in place yet, and one group is speaking about its content. In any case, a propaganda move has begun with Netanyahu’s address to Congress, and this is also another propaganda ploy. It’s regrettable that there is a group who are against reaching a deal. Of course, we insist that if we do reach a deal, it has to be one in which the rights of our people are observed, and we are sure that there are ways to achieve this result.

Nermeen Shaikh: Zarif went on to warn, quote, “if the next administration revokes any agreement with the stroke of a pen, as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law.” Secretary of State John Kerry responded to the letter on Wednesday.

Secretary of State John Kerry: My reaction to the letter was utter disbelief. During my 29 years here in the Senate, I never heard of nor even heard of it being proposed anything comparable to this. If I had, I can guarantee you, no matter what the issue and no matter who was president, I would have certainly rejected it. I think no one is questioning anybody’s right to dissent. Any senator can go to the floor any day and raise any of the questions that were raised in that. But to write to the leaders in the middle of a negotiation, particularly the leaders that they have criticized other people for even engaging with or writing to, to write them and suggest that they’re going to give a constitutional lesson, which, by the way, was absolutely incorrect, is quite stunning. This letter ignores more than two centuries of precedent in the conduct of American foreign policy.

Nermeen Shaikh: According to the website LobeLog, the senator who spearheaded the letter, freshman Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton, received nearly $1 million in donations to his election campaign efforts last year from the Emergency Committee for Israel, run by neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol. The Intercept reports Cotton was set to appear at a secretive meeting of weapons contractors the day after sending the letter. Secretary of State John Kerry returns to Switzerland Sunday in a bid to reach a nuclear deal before a March 31st deadline.

Amy Goodman: To talk more about the letter and what’s at stake in the nuclear negotiations, we’re joined by two guests. Hillary Mann Leverett is with us, served as National Security Council—in the National Security Council under Presidents Clinton and Bush. From 2001 to ‘03, she was a U.S. negotiator with Iran on Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Iraq, in which capacity she negotiated directly with Iran’s present foreign minister, Javad Zarif. She is the CEO of the political risk consultancy firm Stratega. She will join Georgetown University as a visiting scholar next month. She’s co-author of Going to Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ali Gharib is also with us, contributor to The Nation magazine. His most recent piece is headlined “Meet Tom Cotton, the Senator Behind the Republicans’ Letter to Iran.”

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Hillary Mann Leverett, let’s begin with you. Talk about the significance and the effect of this letter. How unusual is it? Where was it sent? Who sent it?

Hillary Mann Leverett: It really is unprecedented, from as far as I can determine and as far as legal scholars that I’ve canvassed can determine. It is really unprecedented. It’s really tantamount, if you could imagine, during the 1960s, if the Republicans in Congress had written to then Soviet leader Khrushchev warning him not to negotiate with Kennedy over the Cuban missile crisis because the United States would bomb the Soviet Union two years later if the Republicans won the election. It’s really tantamount to that kind of reckless interference and dangerous, reckless interference for U.S. interests.

The effect here—the conventional wisdom, I think, in Washington is the effect has served to just portray the Republicans as somewhat ignorant—or really ignorant—and marginalized. But I think it actually is having a little bit more of an effect that should be taken seriously.

In that letter, the letter that Nermeen read the quote from, that specifically honed in on how the Republicans warned that this agreement would be just between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei, is very significant. Any agreement that would be reached between the United States and Iran, first of all, Secretary Kerry said yesterday before Congress, would not be legally binding. So, whether someone signs it, to begin with, is a question. But even if someone were to sign it, it would be Secretary Kerry, who’s been negotiating it for the United States, and it would be Foreign Minister Zarif on the Iranian side. It wouldn’t be Ayatollah Khamenei. I think that that letter was—that sentence was inserted to make this an issue of who is President Obama, really to get to the ethnic and identity issues that the Republicans, in particular, have been pressing here in Washington, that somehow this is about Islam and Islamic radicalism and Muslims, and to tie them into this package, as Prime Minister Netanyahu did when he came to Washington and made his speech equating the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Islamic State, that they are two sides of the same coin.

In that context, President Obama has been in some ways eerily silent, and I think this is a serious mistake. It behooves the president to make the case, the strategic case, to the American people why a fundamentally different relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran is in America’s interest—not that we’re doing Iran a favor to welcome them back into the international community, instead that this is critically important for the United States, that after a decade of disastrous wars in the Middle East, we need a fundamentally different policy, and that starts with a fundamentally different relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran. But I’m afraid the administration isn’t making that case, because they don’t want, in some ways, to be seen as liking the ayatollah or Islamists in Iran or elsewhere. And that’s going to be a problem going forward with any deal. Even if there is some sort of technical agreement by the end of the month, that’s going to be a problem going forward, the administration’s inability to embrace a fundamentally different relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran—and I stress the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nermeen Shaikh: Hillary, some have suggested—even though Iran dismissed the letter as propaganda, some have suggested the letter may have made the U.S. appear an untrustworthy negotiating partner to Iran, thereby weakening the chances of reaching an agreement. Could you comment on that?

Hillary Mann Leverett: I think the chances of reaching an agreement, from the Iranian side, are actually quite high. I was in Iran in November. I went to—I was invited to address a conference at the University of Tehran (kind of funny, in a way) on the future of American executive-legislative relations in the wake of the midterm elections here and the capture of the Senate by the Republicans. So I think in Iran they have a very acute, sophisticated understanding of U.S. politics, and I think they went into these negotiations very clear-eyed. Foreign Minister Zarif, I liken him to the Kissinger, you know, of our times. He is a great statesman and a superlative strategist. The Iranians have gone into this negotiation very clear-eyed, without any mistaken wishful thinking that somehow Congress and the—particularly the pro-Israel lobby in Washington is going to embrace Iran. They went into this knowing what they were getting into. So I don’t think this is going to inhibit them in any way.

But they are certainly not going to—if there was any inclination to trust President Obama’s word or Secretary Kerry’s word, this letter certainly hurts that. They’re certainly not going to go down that road. I think they’re going to be even more focused on getting international guarantees—for example, through a United Nations Security Council resolution, through increased relations and cooperation agreements with Russia and China. Both the Russian and Chinese presidents will be visiting Iran this spring. So, Foreign Minister Zarif and, I think, the Iranian leadership, in their foreign policy and national security councils, they’re focused on getting what they want, they have a plan, and they’re not going to let these kind of Washington politics derail them.

Amy Goodman: Speaking Wednesday, Republican lawmakers defended their decision to sign the letter. This is Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Sen. Rand Paul: So why do I sign this letter? I sign this letter because I sign it to an administration that doesn’t listen, to an administration that, every turn, tries to go around Congress because you think you can’t get your way. The president says, “Oh, the Congress won’t do what I want, so I’ve got to—I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got my phone. I’m going to do what I want.” The letter was to you. The letter was to Iran, but it should have been cc’d to the White House, because the White House needs to understand that any agreement that removes or changes legislation will have to be passed by us.

Amy Goodman: So, Hillary Mann Leverett, if you can respond to what Senator Rand Paul, one of the signatories to this letter—47 Republican senators signed this letter—has said? And he’s particularly significant given that he could be a presidential contender in 2016. And so, in Iran’s eyes, he could be a person, if he were to become president, who would do just what the Republicans are threatening, that somehow they would unsign the agreement.

Hillary Mann Leverett: Yes, and also he has been somewhat of a different voice on the Republican side, certainly not someone who has been in lockstep with the neoconservatives here in Washington, something also that, when I was in Iran, was noticed. They understand what goes on in terms of American politics and who’s who in terms of candidates here and what they stand for. So it is particularly significant, this change, potentially, in Senator Paul’s position.

It’s also a little bit odd that you have Senator Paul not only lecturing—joining a letter to lecture Iran’s leaders, but now saying that in fact it should have been sent to the White House, where of course the president is not only a Harvard Law graduate but was a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago. And the last time I looked, you know, Senator Paul doesn’t have that kind of pedigree.

But even with that, I think what Senator Paul’s argument gets to, again, which is critically needed, is the administration has not made their case. President Obama has, at most, said, “Well, this is 50-50,” as if it’s a take-it-or-leave-it proposition to get an agreement with Iran. He has not made the case that we need it, in American interests, for a fundamentally different policy toward the Middle East that gets us off the trajectory for hegemony and dominance in the region, and instead allows a more natural balance of power in the region, where Iran can be a normal, strong state, to balance the reckless impulses of even some of our so-called allies, like the Saudis and even the Israelis. That’s critically important, but President Obama has not made that case. And so you’re seeing even someone like Senator Paul, who I think has had a more measured foreign policy approach than the neoconservatives in his party, come out to join this letter to demand, in a sense, that President Obama either make the case or come to Congress and let them do the foreign policy making.

Nermeen Shaikh: Well, I want to turn to comments made by Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton, the senator who spearheaded the letter to Iran. Just weeks into his first term in the Senate, he warned against a nuclear deal with Iran while speaking at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

Sen. Tom Cotton: First, the goal of our policy must be clear: regime change in Iran. We cannot and will not be safe as long as Islamist despots rule in Iran. The policy of the United States should therefore be to support regime opponents and promote a constitutional government at peace with the United States, Israel and the world. The United States should cease all appeasement, conciliation and concessions towards Iran, starting with the sham nuclear negotiations. Certain voices call for congressional restraint, urging Congress not to act now, lest Iran walk away from the negotiating table, undermining the fabled yet always absent moderates in Iran. But the end of these negotiations isn’t an unintended consequence of congressional action. It is very much an intended consequence, a feature, not a bug, so to speak. Third, congressional actions should start with crippling new sanctions against Iran. These sanctions should be immediate. They should not be contingent on further negotiations with Iran. On the contrary, Iran is achieving, through slow motion, all that it might want in a final deal, exploiting the Obama administration’s desperation to keep the negotiations alive and for a deal, any deal. It’s time for the responsible adults in both parties of Congress to stop this farce.

Nermeen Shaikh: That was Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who led efforts to have this letter signed and sent to Iran, and authored it. So, Ali Gharib, can you talk about who Tom Cotton is? Your recent piece is called “Meet Tom Cotton, the Senator Behind the Republicans’ Letter to Iran.””

Ali Gharib: Tom Cotton is himself a Harvard graduate and Harvard Law graduate, and he’s sort of gained conservative fame by calling in 2006 for James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times to be jailed for writing a story about how the U.S. tracks terrorism finances. And this was a sort of a young guy who’d left law school and he’d joined the military and was at the time deployed in Iraq. Now, that open letter that he wrote at the time—he’s a fan of the format—got the attention of Bill Kristol, who began meeting with Cotton when he was deployed stateside at Arlington National Cemetery in 2007. And they would, you know, according to The Atlantic, frequently go out for drinks together. And then, you know, over the next few years, they developed this relationship, years before Cotton entered politics. Eventually, he was elected to the House in 2012, spent two years there before becoming a freshman senator and immediately making a splash by distinguishing himself as the most hawkish member of an incredibly hawkish body.

And this letter is basically par for the course for him. It’s exactly what he’s trying to do, is end these—you know, you can just listen to Tom Cotton himself. He’s trying to end these negotiations. And he doesn’t quite say that the next step is military action, but it seems patently obvious that if you want U.S. policy to be regime change and you want them to have no nuclear program at all, there aren’t a lot of ways to accomplish that unless you’re going to attack them militarily. And so, this is basically the pattern. And it’s no surprise then that The Daily Beast reported that this letter was produced in conjunction with advice from Bill Kristol. Bill Kristol is a guy who’s called for attacking Iran for years now; literally maybe eight years he’s been calling for it publicly. And so, Tom Cotton has really been shepherded along. Nermeen, as you mentioned, he took in a million bucks for his campaign in ad buys from the Emergency Committee for Israel. These are exactly the type of neoconservative hawks who drove us into Iraq, and these are the people who have shepherded and really birthed Tom Cotton’s political career. It’s not a surprise that he’s here doing what he’s doing.

Nermeen Shaikh: So could you explain why these people and these institutions are opposed to reaching a nuclear deal with Iran? What’s at stake?

Ali Gharib: Well, I think part of it is what Hillary was hinting at before, that there’s a balance of power in the region. Especially a lot of these people are sort of ultra-pro-Israel hawks. And there’s a balance of power that they don’t want to disrupt, where Israel maintains a sort of—its dominance over its part of the region. And the Israeli hawks, especially Netanyahu, who’s in power now, but pretty much the broad spectrum of Israeli political opinion, is against any sort of détente with Iran. They think Iran should just be isolated and crippled, sort of along—

Amy Goodman: No matter whether Netanyahu wins or loses next week in the Israeli election.

Ali Gharib: Yeah, I mean, there’s broad consensus there that there’s—you know, it sort of ranges from a fear of any sort of nuclear deal to Iran to outright opposition to it. There’s nobody there that—there’s nobody in the Israeli political system that’s making any sort of argument about Iran. It’s not an election issue. People don’t talk about it, even the leader of the Zionist camp, Labor leader Bougie Herzog. It just doesn’t—Iran doesn’t come up. Everybody is sort of in step with Netanyahu on it. They might say that his tactics are wrong, but not his strategy and his goals.

Amy Goodman: Now, Bill Kristol is who said Iraq would be a cakewalk. He was the early big supporter of Sarah Palin.

Ali Gharib: Right, this is kind of his record, is the combination of disastrous and unnecessary foreign wars and pushing sort of clownish political candidates who will help him carry out this agenda.

Amy Goodman: Now, Hillary Mann Leverett, can you talk about who is negotiating this deal—I mean, if you read the letter from the 47 senators, it looks as if this is a deal between the United States and Iran—but in fact who the countries are, and also, interestingly, that right now Iran is helping the Iraqi military defeat the so-called Islamic State?

Hillary Mann Leverett: Yes, but if I can just come back to a point that you were just discussing with Ali that I think is very important in terms of the balance of power in the region, you know, in the 1980s, the Israelis were not at all concerned about Iran’s nuclear program. They weren’t at all concerned about many of Iran’s other activities that they now profess concern about. In fact, in the 1980s, the United States wanted to impose sections on Iran for our concern about their connection to the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. And the then Israeli government, in a live interview by the then Minister Ariel Sharon, said that Israel would oppose sanctions being—they would oppose sanctions being imposed on Iran. That changes in 1990, not because of any change in Iranian behavior, but because the Iraqi military was essentially taken out after the invasion of Kuwait and the U.S. routing of Iraq from Kuwait. Literally six months after that, in early 1992, you have the first visit to Washington by then Prime Minister Rabin, who’s considered more dovish than the current prime minister, Netanyahu, and it was then that Rabin started to raise concerns about Iran’s nuclear program and the prospect of sanctions. And it was then, in 1995, that the United States first imposes its comprehensive economic embargo on Iran. So I think it’s important to understand that even though Prime Minister Netanyahu’s rhetoric is very vitriolic, there is something deeper in terms of Israeli concerns about the rise of Iran in the region, that could check Israel’s, what I would call, reckless impulses vis-à-vis its neighbors.

With that said, I think the change in the balance of power is already happening in the region, and it’s something where, to me, it seems a bit underscored by the desperation in Netanyahu’s rhetoric and the desperation in the rhetoric of this letter by Senator Cotton. The balance of power in the region has already changed, where you have Iran’s influence in Iraq is now being recognized as not a bad thing by the American general, Dempsey, yesterday before Congress. Iran’s influence in countries as far afield from Iran as Yemen is now recognized and not seen as necessarily a bad thing. Some in Washington would prefer there to be Iranian influence in Yemen than al-Qaeda controlling Yemen. So there’s already a change in the regional balance of power, and around the world, that I think the United States is perhaps, in an unacknowledged way, going—accepting in some form.

That comes into play with the negotiations with Iran. Even though they appear right now to be very focused on the U.S.-Iranian part, they do very much include the other members of the permanent—of the Security Council plus Germany. And in the Security Council, I think two of the most important players on the Iran issue are Russia and China. Now, they haven’t been very vocal in terms of what their demands are in the negotiations, but they’re going to be critically important for Iran going forward, not because of some military or nefarious reason, but because, particularly for China, as China is looking to, in a lot of ways, re-establish their Silk Road and balance against the U.S. encroachment toward them in East Asia by trying to re-establish this Silk Road, looking west into Central Asia and toward Iran, Iran is critically important. And I think we’re going to see an historic visit by China’s President Xi to Iran in May. So there certainly are a lot of other players, important players, here. And I think Secretary Kerry, in some ways, is doing a good job trying to juggle all those pieces and re-orient the United States toward a fundamentally new world, where the balance of power in the Middle East is already changing, the balance of power around the world is already changing, and the United States must accommodate itself to that.

Amy Goodman: And the U.S. being on the same side as Iran when it comes to the Islamic State?

Hillary Mann Leverett: Yes. I mean, you know, in a different balance of power, where the United States is not seeking hegemony and dominance in the Middle East, where we’re not seeking to impose political outcomes or regimes in these various countries, in that kind of scenario, where the United States is not seeking all-out dominance and hegemony, Iran has to be an important—not just an important player, but an important partner. And, you know, I think American administrations have recognized that before. They certainly recognized that under the Shah’s Iran. But the Shah’s Iran was fundamentally unstable because it wasn’t representative.

What’s so important about Iran today as the Islamic Republic, that we, many in Washington, in particular, don’t like, but is so important, is that it is pursuing an independent foreign policy, and it has an indigenously created, and therefore much more legitimate, political order—with all its flaws. It’s indigenously created, and therefore has an inherent legitimacy that a lot of the other political orders don’t. The focus on foreign policy independence, it may sound counterintuitive, but that’s precisely what the United States needs. We do not need, as Senator Cotton was advocating, yet another puppet government portending to carry forth American interests that are really contrary to America’s real interests, which would be for peace and stability in the region.

Amy Goodman: We’re going to have to leave it there, but I thank you very much, Hillary Mann Leverett, for joining us—

Hillary Mann Leverett: Thank you.

Amy Goodman: —who served on the National Security Council under Presidents Clinton and Bush. From 2001 to ’03, she was U.S. negotiator with Iran. She’s co-author of the book Going to Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran. And thanks so much to Ali Gharib, who is the contributor to The Nation magazine. We will link to your piece, “Meet Tom Cotton, the Senator Behind the Republicans’ Letter to Iran,” as well as your other articles on Iran.

Hillary appeared on CCTV’s The Heat to discuss Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress and the trajectory of U.S.-Iranian relations, see here (Hillary’s segment runs for the first 9:25 of the program). In keeping with her recent CNN Op-Ed, see here, Hillary emphasized that a deal between the P5+1 represents not just a prospective resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue, but, even more importantly, a potentially fundamental transformation of Middle Eastern regional dynamics:

“[President Obama] has gone down this road of negotiations—real, serious, intense negotiations—with Iran, in some ways taking a page from my book, [Going to Tehran]: that the only way you can really deal with a rising Iran is to have constructive relations with it. President Obama is seriously engaged in that prospect, to have a constructive relationship with Iran. He can’t just have it by coming to a good agreement with Iran. He’s going to have to break crockery and actually tell the Israelis that it’s just a good [U.S.] relationship with Iran. It’s going to be a different sort of [U.S.] relationship with Israel. That, potentially is revolutionary for the United States, and could be enormously productive…

There is a real difference between Israel and, potentially a United States that is looking not to have dominance in the Middle East, but to realign its policies; there is a huge difference between Israeli policies and that kind of American policy. That kind of American policy would look at—instead of invading and occupying country after country, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria—instead of those kinds of military adventures, a new American policy would pull us back (not completely withdraw, but pull us back) into more of a balance of power approach in which we have constructive relations with all of the important players, including Iran. That is fundamentally at odds with Israeli policies, because a good [U.S.] relationship with Iran would constrain Israel.

So, in the words of former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the problem with Iran is not that they would bomb Israel. The problem with Iran is that they would make the Israelis think twice the next time [Israel] wanted to invade Lebanon or bomb Gaza. That’s good for the United States; to constrain the Israelis that way where they would have to think twice is good for us—but it certainly puts us at loggerheads with Israel, and that’s not just a Netanyahu problem.”

The program also includes an interview with our colleague Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Dean of the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran, starting 19:40 into the video. As always, we encourage readers to post comments, Facebook likes, etc., both on this site and on CCTV’s Web site.

In the wake of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress earlier this week, CNN has published Hillary’s Op Ed, “Why Iran’s Rise Is a Good Thing,” see here. The piece opens,

In Netanyahu’s view, America should only improve relations with an Iran that stops its regional ‘aggression,’ its support for ‘terrorism,’ and its ‘threat[s] to annihilate … Israel.’ In other words, America should not improve relations with an Iran whose regional influence is rising.

In reality, Iran’s rise is not only normal, it is actually essential to a more stable region. As nuclear talks with Tehran enter a decisive phase, rapprochement with a genuinely independent Iran—not a nominally independent Iran whose strategic orientation is subordinated to U.S. preferences—is vital to halting the decline of America’s strategic position.”

The piece goes on to explain why it is critically necessary for the United States to abandon its failed and profoundly self-damaging quest for Middle Eastern hegemony and to embrace instead “a regional balance of power—not the chimera of American dominance misleadingly labeled as ‘balance,’ but an actual balance in which major regional states, acting in their own interests, constrain one another.” The piece also explains why, in this context, U.S. cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran is utterly indispensable—and how Israeli elites’ acute recognition that U.S. realignment with a rising Iran would inevitably constrain some of Israel’s preferred national security strategies impels Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders to extraordinary efforts to thwart U.S.-Iranian rapprochement. To continue reading, click here: http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/04/opinion/leverett-iran-relations/

As always, we encourage readers to post comments, Facebook likes, etc., both on this site and on CNN’s Web site.

On HuffPost Live for the Netanyahu speech to Congress yesterday, Hillary underscores this key point: “The United States is looking to accept the Islamic Republic of Iran as a critical player in the region. That will, by definition, curtail or contain some of Israel’s preferred foreign policy and national security strategies. And that’s what [the Netanyahu visit] is all about.” What’s at stake, she argues, is “how the Middle East—and the United States—is dealing and will deal with the rising power of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Hillary points out that Iran’s rise, within the international legal system, is particularly problematic for Israel because Israel “looks at many of its neighbors, especially the Islamic Republic of Iran, as not capable of being part of the international community or international legal structures…a position which resonates very strangely in the Middle East, because, of course, Israel is the only country in the region that has a nuclear arsenal and refuses to sign up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. [This] may be why Israel doesn’t want Iran to have a program—they want to retain their nuclear monopoly over the Middle East.”

But trying to continue to force Iran to cede its internationally recognized sovereign and treaty rights to indigenous nuclear power production, “is not only not feasible, but leads us on the path to yet another war. And President Obama promised us, when he first ran for office, he wasn’t going to get us into another ‘stupid war.’ Those were his words. And unfortunately that’s the path that Prime Minister Netanyahu would otherwise have us be on.”

Obama, of course, has not always lived up to that promise; witness his disastrous intervention in Libya. Let’s see if he lives up to it in the Iranian case, which is so critical to the future of the Middle East and to America’s trajectory as a great power in the 21st century.

To see Hillary’s in-depth discussion of the intersecting dynamics of U.S.-Iranian and U.S.-Israeli relations on HuffPost Live, both before Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, click on the first video above or here, where she talks one-on-one, and on the second video above or here, where she is part of a panel with Rami Khouri from the American University of Beirut, and afterward, click on the second video above or here, 59:10 into the video.

Those who watched Netanyahu’s speech to Congress live or who view it on video may notice Alan Dershowitz, Hillary debate opponent in two segments on CNN last week, see here, sitting next to Elie Wiesel and Sara Netanyahu (the prime minister’s wife) in the gallery.

In the lead-up to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech before the U.S. Congress this week, and the controversy it has engendered, CNN asked Hillary Mann Leverett to debate renowned Harvard Law School professor, celebrity defense attorney, and hawkish supporter of Israeli policies Alan Dershowitz, over two separate segments, on the merits of an Iran deal and the Obama Administration’s differences with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on this subject.

Hillary has worked in the Middle East and in U.S. policy making institutions (the National Security Council and State Department) for twenty-five years. From 2001-2003, she negotiated for the U.S. government directly with Iranian counterparts—including then Deputy Foreign Minister Javad Zarif—over Afghanistan, al-Qaida, and Iraq, in what were the most constructive and productive negotiations U.S. and Iranian officials had with each other since the 1979 revolution. In 2003, she drafted a ground-breaking memo to then Secretary of State Colin Powell advocating that the United States further engage the Islamic Republic in a “grand bargain” to deal with their areas of disagreement. In 2006, with her husband, Flynt Leverett, she again broke ground with an op-ed in the New York Times taking that case public: that, instead of targeting Iran as part of an “axis of evil,” America needed to strike a “grand bargain” with it. In 2013, they published the book, Going To Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Alan Dershowitz is a Harvard University emeritus professor of law, world-renowned celebrity attorney, and, according to his website, “Israel’s single most visible defender – the Jewish state’s lead attorney in the court of public opinion.” His most recent book is Terror Tunnels, The Case for Israel’s Just War Against Hamas.

It is important to note that the debate was extremely time limited and that Hillary, at times, had to make her points over Mr. Dershowitz’ screaming interruptions. Nevertheless, the debate aired over two days in America’s premier news network, in one of their most viewed and listened to time slots.

Here is an edited transcript of their debate:

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Secretary of State John Kerry says it is too soon to judge a deal that would restrict Iran’s nuclear activities for at least ten years. But it’s not too soon for him to say the bottom line is that Iran won’t get nukes, I guess, for ten years and that raises the issue of whether or not this is a good move at all.

There are two very different sides to this we have both represented. Hillary Mann Leverett, CEO of STRATEGA, Middle East analyst, and co-author of Going to Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran and Professor Alan Dershowitz, emeritus professor of Law at Harvard Law School and author of Terror Tunnels, The Case for Israel’s Just War Against Hamas.

We will start with the proposition that if the U.S. wants to make a deal, it should be a good thing. You represent that, Hillary, why as a citizen should I be happy about this deal?

HILLARY MANN LEVERETT, Going to Tehran:

First, the Islamic Republic of Iran is not going away—it is a critically important rising power, a huge hydrocarbon power, with a sophisticated, educated population—in some of the same ways the People’s Republic of China was a rising power in the early 1970s and just as then President Nixon came to understand that the United States, for its own interests, had to accept this rising power in Asia, the United States now needs to accept this pivotal and rising power in the Middle East.

It is imperative for the United States to do so now because, after a decade of counter-productive military adventures in the Middle East, our strategic position there is in free fall and we need a more constructive relationship with Iran to enable us to stop this strategically self-damaging pursuit of dominance in the region and instead pursue a balance of power approach that recognizes all of the important powers in the region and has constructive relationships with each of them.

CUOMO: So what is the counter, the basic theory there is that Iran is now like China was, do you agree, Professor?

ALAN DERSHOWITZ, Harvard Law School: Absolutely not, China is a rational calculating, secular government. Iran is a suicide nation. It’s sent thousands of its own children to die in the war against Iraq, with little tokens promising them paradise.

Rafsanjani, one of the former leaders, said if Iran gets nuclear weapons and bombs Israel, it will kill 3 million to 5 million Jews. Israel will retaliate to kill 10 million to 20 million Muslims, and the tradeoff would be worth it because it would destroy Israel and it would leave Islam untouched.

So the idea of comparing rational China to Iran, the greatest exporter of terrorism in the world is absurd. Iran is determined to get a nuclear weapon. There is no good resolution to this. We are talking about worse, worser and worsest.

This is a bad deal because it has a sunset provision. It allows Iran after ten years to develop nuclear weapons. Now if you believe The New York Times, in its editorial this morning, The New York Times says after the deal runs its course, Iran would be able to pursue nuclear enrichment for energy and medical purposes without constraints.

If you believe that, that Iran wants to simply pursue medical and energy purposes, you should favor this deal. But if you think Iran is going to cheat, if you think it already has cheated, for example the Iran resistance movement yesterday revealed there’s a secret hide-out facility called Laza Van 3.

They’re going to cheat their way into a nuclear bomb. It will be a game changer as President Obama acknowledged when he earlier said he would never allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. He’s now that policy.

CUOMO: OK, so let’s leave the politics of flip-flopping aside and address the main point, which is you are giving the most dangerous weapon to someone who has proven again and again they want to do dangerous things, Hillary, how does that make sense?

LEVERETT: Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, the entire U.S. national security and intelligence establishment and the entire Israeli national security and intelligence establishment say Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons and has not even taken a decision to do so—which is one reason why diplomacy is the most effective course here.

But Prime Minister Netanyahu, as Professor Dershowitz just repeated, has been telling us this canard—that Iran has or is pursuing nuclear weapons—for years. Two years ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu stood in front of the American public at AIPAC and gave Professor Dershowitz’s fact-free argument verbatim, that if you believe the Iranians are pursuing nuclear energy or medicine, I have a bridge to sell you–

CUOMO: Do you think Israel is lying about the Iranian threat?

LEVERETT: That is basically what the United States government is now saying. The White House spokesman came out and specifically said we are no longer sharing information about the negotiations with the Israelis because they are distorting it and putting out not accurate information.

Prime Minister Netenyahu and his friends here are destroying the U.S./Israel relationship for a canard, for something that is not true.

CUOMO: Look, the idea that Israel feels threatened by Iran is not a canard. The basis on which they feel threatened is what you’re speaking to, Professor, your point on that?

LEVERETT: Well –

CUOMO: Hold on, Hillary.

DERSHOWITZ: If you really think that Iran has no interest in developing nuclear weapons then you should, you don’t even need a deal. Just let them pursue their biological and medical facility. Everybody in the world, with any common sense, knows that Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons.

Whether they have made the ultimate theological decision or not, is how many angels on the head of a pin. If out there you think Iran is not interested in developing nuclear weapons at all, then you should be on the side of my –

CUOMO: Susan Rice –

DERSHOWITZ: If you believe that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, they have to be stopped. President Obama said that. John Kerry has said that. Everybody has said that—that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons—except my distinguished opponent.

CUOMO: The thinking goes back and forth. The intel is soft about it, which makes it more confusing, let’s get where Susan Rice, the national security defense adviser, is on this. On this and as it relates to the Israeli prime minister. Let’s take a listen.

(Video Clip of) SUSAN RICE, National Security Advisor: What has happened over the last several weeks by virtue of the invitation that was issued, by the Speaker and the acceptance of it by Prime Minister Netenyahu two weeks in advance of his election is that on both sides, there has now been injected a degree of partisanship, which is not only unfortunate, I think it’s, it’s destructive of the fabric of the relationship.

CUOMO: All right, so that is obviously a segue way into how this is going to affect U.S./Israeli relations, which could not be more important and vital to everything that’s going on in the region and, obviously, to domestic interests as well. Final point, we have one minute. Hillary, one point on that?

LEVERETT: Prime Minister Netanyahu and his supporters are peddling a false case that could get us into yet another strategically damaging war—just as they did with Iraq and other places in the Middle East. What the Obama administration is now doing, in an unprecedented way, is calling a spade a spade by saying Netanyahu and his supporters here in the United States are putting out a false story, which will lead the U.S. to yet another war.

CUOMO: That’s your point. What’s your final point, Professor?

DERSHOWITZ: Well, that’s what Neville Chamberlin argued, that it was a false narrative that Hitler really meant what he said. I have to take very seriously what Iran has said, what they’ve threatened to destroy Israel. They’ve threatened to destroy the United States. We’ve discovered secret facilities for nuclear weapons.

You must believe that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, and if they are trying to develop nuclear weapons, there can’t be a sunset provision. They have to be permanently stopped from doing so. This is a bad deal.

CUOMO: Hillary Mann Leverett, Professor Alan Dershowitz, thank you very much, two very intelligent people who understand the situation laying it out for you. Now you decide. Let us know.

Part II:

Well, President Obama and dozens of fellow Democrats do not like it, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is coming to Washington for a speech to Congress [tomorrow]. How will this affect U.S./Israeli relations? We’ll have a debate on that next.

(Video clip of) SUSAN RICE, National Security Advisor: There has now been injected a degree of partisanship, which is not only unfortunate; I think it’s destructive of the fabric of the relationship.

ALISYN CAMEROTA CNN ANCHOR: Well, that was National Security Adviser Susan Rice earlier this week, calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming speech before Congress, quote, “destructive.” Now the White House plans to send Rice and U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power to a pro-Israel lobbying conference. Will that ease the tensions?

Let’s debate this. Let’s bring in Hillary Mann Leverett. She’s a former National Security Council official under presidents Clinton and Bush. She’s also the co-author of Going to Tehran. And Alan Dershowitz, emeritus professor of law at Harvard Law School and the author of Terror Tunnels: The Case for Israel’s Just War Against Hamas.

Hillary, let me start with you. Do you agree with Susan Rice’s assessment that Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit will be destructive to the relationship between U.S. and Israel?

HILLARY MANN LEVERETT, AUTHOR, GOING TO TEHRAN: U.S.-Israel relations are certainly at an historic low point. But in fact, it may be a clarifying moment, a very important moment. It may not be quite as destructive as the rhetoric out there portends it to be.

I think it will be important to clarify that Prime Minister Netanyahu holds a position that is essentially fact-free, that U.S. officials have described on background to the Washington Post as “fictional,” that Netanyahu is living in a “fantasyland.”

CAMEROTA: Meaning that you don’t believe that Iran is as close to getting nuclear weapons as he will say they are.

MANN LEVERETT: It’s not just me—it’s almost the entire Israeli national security establishment, 200 Israeli generals came out this week to say that Netanyahu’s claims are not accurate. It’s also the White House spokesman saying Netanyahu’s claims are not accurate. It’s the entire U.S. national security establishment, all 16 of our intelligence agencies saying Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons…

CAMEROTA: Right.

MANN LEVERETT: … saying that Netanyahu is not accurate. What is critically important here is that the administration is saying that the Israelis and Netanyahu, in particular—and Kerry said this to Congress—cannot come here yet again, as Netanyahu did in 2002 on the eve of the Iraq war, to give us a false story that will help lead us into war. They’re saying we’re not going to do that again.

CAMEROTA: OK. Alan, do you agree with that assessment?

ALAN DERSHOWITZ, AUTHOR,TERROR TUNNELS: Absolutely not. This is, at bottom, not about the Israeli-American relation. It’s a great constitutional and foreign policy debate about whether we trust Iran, whether we are prepared to allow them to become a nuclear weapon power. This is the most extensive exporter of terrorism in the world today.

And it’s not between Israel and the United States. It’s between the Obama administration and Congress, Senator Menendez and other leading Democrats. The Washington Post editorialized against this deal. Today David Brooks has a brilliant article in the New York Times calling it a bad deal, saying it’s a bad bet, because it accepts my distinguished opponent’s view that Iran is not really trying to develop nuclear weapons, that it can be brought into the fold of the western world. It’s a very bad bet.

It’s the bet that Chamberlain made in 1938 when he said that he could deal with Hitler. All Hitler wanted was Sudetenland and if we give them that, there will be peace in our time.

CAMEROTA: But Alan, do you…

DERSHOWITZ: This is a great debate that shouldn’t be reduced to a personality dispute between Netanyahu and Obama.

CAMEROTA: Sure. But do you agree that it is possible that Prime Minister Netanyahu has overhyped some of his claims about what Iran is capable of?

DERSHOWITZ: Absolutely not. Iran is capable of and wants to develop nuclear weapons. Everybody knows that. There is a dispute among intelligence communities. All intelligence communities have disputes about how close they are.

If you’re Israel, and you’ve been told that Iran’s goal is to destroy the nation state of the Jewish people, you want to always err on the side of caution. And the worst you can say about the Israeli government is that it is erring on the side of caution. It cannot take a risk to its own survival—a risk that the United States seems to be prepared to take.

It’s a bad deal, particularly the sunset provision, which allows Iran to become a nuclear weapon power within ten years, which really means six years, which means the end of nuclear proliferation. Saudis will try to get nuclear weapons. This is bad deal. And…

CAMEROTA: OK. Hold on, Alan.

DERSHOWITZ: Everybody should be listening to Prime Minister Netanyahu and not walking out on his speech. That’s a terrible mistake.

CAMEROTA: OK, Hillary, Professor Dershowitz has just laid out the case for, you know, they want nuclear weapons at some point. So why not fight against that?

MANN LEVERETT: First of all because it’s a completely fact-free case. There is no dispute among the intelligence communities. The entire U.S. intelligence community and the entire Israeli intelligence community, all of them say, all of them hold that Iran has not even taken a decision to pursue nuclear weapons.

Now the problem with Professor Dershowitz’ case, which is critical…

DERSHOWITZ: That’s nonsense. That’s just false.

MANN LEVERETT: The critical problem with his case that is absolutely critical, is that he wants us to take his word for it. He wants us to take Prime Minister Netanyahu’s word for it, rather than neutral monitors and inspectors on the ground.

This is the perilous course people like this helped put us on with the invasion of Iraq. Instead of taking inspectors and monitors credible information…

DERSHOWITZ: Israel was against — Israel was against the invasion of Iraq.

CAMEROTA: OK, so…

MANN LEVERETT: What this means is that instead of having objective information that we can all evaluate, we have to take the word of one Israeli prime minister, over the facts and case of even his own intelligence community. This is very dangerous, and that’s why the Obama administration…

DERSHOWITZ: That’s just not true.

MANN LEVERETT: … is risking such a rift with Israel, with its erstwhile ally. That’s why they’re taking this big domestic political risk.

CAMEROTA: OK, hold on, Hillary.

DERSHOWITZ: That’s just not true.

CAMEROTA: Alan, is there a rift between Prime Minister Netanyahu and his intelligence community?

DERSHOWITZ: No. One of the people running against him who is campaigning against him is the former head of the Mossad, who has always been at odds with him. But everybody in the Israeli establishment, particularly those in the know, believe that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. And that they will get nuclear weapons under this deal.

Don’t try to pose this as the Israeli intelligence against Netanyahu. The vast majority of Israeli intelligence is against this deal. They’re against Iran developing nuclear weapons. Almost everybody except my distinguished opponent here believes that Iran has already decided to develop nuclear weapons.

And here’s my offer to you out there. If you believe her and believe that Iran has peaceful intentions and wants to develop nuclear energy for energy and medical purposes, then accept the deal. But if you believe as I do and almost everybody in the intelligence community that Iran is determined to get nuclear weapons, then reject this deal…

CAMEROTA: OK.

DERSHOWITZ: … which has a sunset provision and will allow the greatest exporter of terrorism to become a nuclear weapon exporter of terrorism…

CAMEROTA: Alan…

DERSHOWITZ: … with ICBMs that can reach the shores of the United States.

CAMEROTA: Alan, Hillary, thank you for the debate. Obviously, we will be watching what happens in Congress with Benjamin Netanyahu next week. Thanks so much for being on CNN’s NEW DAY.

Hillary went on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Parry yesterday to discuss the Obama administration’s ongoing war against the Islamic State (IS), see here and here, the public split between the administration and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu over Iran policy, see here, and the continuing crisis in and over Ukraine, see here. On IS, Hillary takes on the all-too-frequent claim that the movement reflects pathological aspects of Islam and/or Middle Eastern culture, noting:

“There was no Islamic State before [the United States] invaded Iraq, before we destroyed the political order there and upturned the political order in the Middle East. The precursor to the Islamic State was Al-Qa’ida in Iraq, which—in contrast to Vice President Cheney’s claims—did not exist in Iraq and which was created as a response to the U.S. invasion. What we minimize in looking at the Islamic State, because we hate their tactics, is that it has emerged as the strongest, most formidable Sunni organization to protect Sunnis and resist the West and other governments that align with the West.”

Underscoring how much Western discourse on IS’ “brutality” (exemplified in the recent execution of a captured Jordanian pilot) and “fanaticism” misses the movement’s highly strategic approach, Hillary points out:

“The strategy of IS has been very clear, instrumental, and extraordinarily effective. Keep in mind—when IS first took Mosul, back in June, they had about 6,000 foot soldiers; today, they have over 50,000.

Although Jordanians want revenge for now, support for IS within Jordan is still deep. It’s not every Jordanian, but it’s deep. There are over 2,000 Jordanians fighting with IS.

So, IS’ strategy is twofold: One is for IS to show would-be attackers as weak, because their response is going to be meaningless in the in the face of IS hostage-killing. The other is to get attackers to overreach: for the United States to be seen as the cruel, inhumane bomber-murderer, and for Jordan, too, to get it to overreach and for this King to been seen as just an American lackey taking orders from the United States…The concern in Jordan for American foreign policy—what it does in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine—is a tool IS uses to surge recruitment very effectively.”

Regarding the controversy over Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s scheduled address to a joint session of Congress about Iran on March 3, Hillary explains:

“It shows how close we are to peace with Iran, which would be as revolutionary and beneficial to the United States as when we recognized and normalized relations with China in the 1970s. Because Obama has taken a page from our book, Going to Tehran, has shown the courage, gone forward, and actually gotten us close to a deal, that has gotten key people in Congress to come out.

The Congressional Black Caucus started it. They had the courage to come out first, when nobody else would come out and back the President, they came out and backed the President. And they said, what’s going on here is the President is doing something right, and we need to defend him against a clear, blatant, partisan attack. And the Israelis fed right into it. They thought they could manipulate Congress, and they went right to the Republicans and tried to make it a partisan game. And I think they’re really going to suffer when this goes down.

We’re looking at fundamental change in the Middle East. U.S. policy cannot sustain itself the way it is, and if President Obama can see this through, he will have a legacy of peace and stability that will be quite remarkable…I think we saw a very smart move by President Obama, by the Democratic Party—frankly, that I hadn’t seen for six years—to lead the agenda, to take charge, to actually lead. They came out hitting after the loss in the midterm elections. From January 20, with the State of the Union speech, what they’ve done on immigration, on a range of things—the Iran issue has become part and parcel of that: ‘let the president lead on foreign policy, let him succeed.’ And then the chips will fall where they may in 2016. And I think that the Democrats are now quite confident, as they haven’t been in a few years, that this will come to fruition on a range of issues for Obama and help surge the Democrats to victory in 2016.”

Finally, as continuing tensions between Washington and Moscow prompt mounting calls for the United States and the West to provide “defensive” weapons to Ukraine, Hillary counters that the only real solution to the crisis is for Washington and its partners to “rebuild the relationship [with Russia and President Vladimir Putin]”—to “talk to them,” to “take their interests seriously,” and to “look at a serious way to go about having a neutral Ukraine.”

Earlier this week, the U.S. government deported our friend and colleague, Dr. Sami Al-Arian, from the United States. Turkey has granted him sanctuary.

Since we first met Dr. Al-Arian a few years ago, he and his family have set standards for faithfulness, moral steadfastness, and commitment to truth to which we can only aspire. More broadly, the U.S. government’s treatment of Dr. al Arian underscores an urgent reality: how the West treats Muslims—in the Middle East, where they are the overwhelming majority, and in diaspora communities in the West itself—is the defining moral and political challenge of our time. The U.S. government’s actions against Sami Al-Arian and his family should remind all of us how badly the United States is failing that challenge.

Sami Al-Arian was targeted by the U.S. government because, during the 1990s, he emerged as one of the most prominent and effective advocates for Palestinian rights that U.S. officials had ever faced. To offer some insight into his case and what it means, we highlight here two pieces. One, by Glenn Greenwald and his colleague at The Intercept, Murtaza Hussain, see here, assesses the U.S. government’s case against Dr. Al-Arian as a glaring example of post-9/11 “America’s eroding democratic values.” This article explains how, as “part of a broader post-9/11 campaign by the U.S. government to criminalize aid and support to Palestinians,” Dr. Al-Arian was “indicated on multiple counts of providing ‘material support’ to [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] and fundraising on their behalf in the United States.” As the article recounts,

“For most of the three years after his arrest, Al-Arian was kept in solitary confinement awaiting trial. During this time, he was regularly subjected to strip-searches, denied normal visitation rights with his family, and allegedly abused by prison staff…When Al-Arian’s case did finally reach trail after years of harsh imprisonment, prosecutors failed to convict Al-Arian on even one charge brought against him. Jurors voted to acquit him on the most serious counts he faced and deadlocked on the remainder of the indictments.

The outcome was hugely embarrassing for the U.S. government. Despite having amassed over 20,000 hours of phone conversations and hundreds of fax messages from over a decade of surveilling Al-Arian, the [Justice Department]—even with all the advantages they enjoyed in terrorism cases in 2003 (and continue to enjoy today)—was unable to convince a jury Al-Arian was the arch-terrorist they had very publicly proclaimed him to be.

Indeed, instead of producing evidence that Al-Arian was involved in actual ‘terrorism,’ the government attempted to use as evidence copies of books and magazines Al-Arian had owned in a failed effort to convince the jury to convict him of apparent thought crimes. This effort failed and a jury ruled to acquit Al-Arian on 8 out of 17 charges while failing to come to a verdict on the remainder.”

The article goes on to describe how, after his trial, “Al-Arian agreed to a plea bargain on the remaining charges by pleading guilty to one count of providing ‘contributions, goods or services’ to [Palestinian Islamic Jihad], a decision he says he undertook out of a desire to end the government’s ongoing persecution of him and win his release from prison. Still, “despite this plea, Al-Arian was not released from prison”; instead, the U.S. government plunged him into a legally Kafkaesque series of additional imprisonments on “civil contempt” charges. Finally, in 2014—after years of relentlessly persecuting Dr. Al-Arian, “the Federal government quietly and unceremoniously dropped all of their charges against [him].”

The second piece we want to highlight is a statement by Sami Al-Arian, released after his departure from the United States. We append it below.

“To my dear friends and supporters,

After 40 years, my time in the U.S. has come to an end. Like many immigrants of my generation, I came to the U.S. in 1975 to seek a higher education and greater opportunities. But I also wanted to live in a free society where freedom of speech, association and religion are not only tolerated but guaranteed and protected under the law. That’s why I decided to stay and raise my family here, after earning my doctorate in 1986. Simply put, to me, freedom of speech and thought represented the cornerstone of a dignified life.

Today, freedom of expression has become a defining feature in the struggle to realize our humanity and liberty. The forces of intolerance, hegemony, and exclusionary politics tend to favor the stifling of free speech and the suppression of dissent. But nothing is more dangerous than when such suppression is perpetrated and sanctioned by government. As one early American once observed, “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” Because government has enormous power and authority over its people, such control must be checked, and people, especially those advocating unpopular opinions, must have absolute protections from governmental overreach and abuse of power. A case in point of course is the issue of Palestinian self-determination. In the United States, as well as in many other western countries, those who support the Palestinian struggle for justice, and criticize Israel’s occupation and brutal policies, have often experienced an assault on their freedom of speech in academia, media, politics and society at large. After the tragic events of September 11th, such actions by the government intensified, in the name of security. Far too many people have been targeted and punished because of their unpopular opinions or beliefs.

During their opening statement in my trial in June 2005, my lawyers showed the jury two poster-sized photographs of items that government agents took during searches of my home many years earlier. In one photo, there were several stacks of books taken from my home library. The other photo showed a small gun I owned at the time. The attorney looked the jury in the eyes and said: “This is what this case is about. When the government raided my client’s house, this is what they seized,” he said, pointing to the books, “and this is what they left,” he added, pointing to the gun in the other picture. “This case is not about terrorism but about my client’s right to freedom of speech,” he continued. Indeed, much of the evidence the government presented to the jury during the six-month trial were speeches I delivered, lectures I presented, articles I wrote, magazines I edited, books I owned, conferences I convened, rallies I attended, interviews I gave, news I heard, and websites I never even accessed. But the most disturbing part of the trial was not that the government offered my speeches, opinions, books, writings, and dreams into evidence, but that an intimidated judicial system allowed them to be admitted into evidence. That’s why we applauded the jury’s verdict. Our jurors represented the best society had to offer. Despite all of the fear-mongering and scare tactics used by the authorities, the jury acted as free people, people of conscience, able to see through Big Brother’s tactics. One hard lesson that must be learned from the trial is that political cases should have no place in a free and democratic society.

But despite the long and arduous ordeal and hardships suffered by my family, I leave with no bitterness or resentment in my heart whatsoever. In fact, I’m very grateful for the opportunities and experiences afforded to me and my family in this country, and for the friendships we’ve cultivated over the decades. These are lifelong connections that could never be affected by distance.

I would like to thank God for all the blessings in my life. My faith sustained me during my many months in solitary confinement and gave me comfort that justice would ultimately prevail.

Our deep thanks go to the friends and supporters across the U.S., from university professors to grassroots activists, individuals and organizations, who have stood alongside us in the struggle for justice.

My trial attorneys, Linda Moreno and the late Bill Moffitt, were the best advocates anyone could ask for, both inside and outside of the courtroom. Their spirit, intelligence, passion and principle were inspirational to so many.

I am also grateful to Jonathan Turley and his legal team, whose tireless efforts saw the case to its conclusion. Jonathan’s commitment to justice and brilliant legal representation resulted in the government finally dropping the case.

Our gratitude also goes to my immigration lawyers, Ira Kurzban and John Pratt, for the tremendous work they did in smoothing the way for this next phase of our lives.

Thanks also to my children for their patience, perseverance and support during the challenges of the last decade. I am so proud of them.

Finally, my wife Nahla h​as been a pillar of love, strength and resilience. She kept our family together during the most difficult times. There are no words to convey the extent of my gratitude.

We look forward to the journey ahead and take with us the countless happy memories we formed during our life in the United States.”

The World Financial Review has published our latest piece, “China Looks West: What Is at Stake in Beijing’s ‘New Silk Road’ Project,” which we co-authored with our colleague at Peking University, Wu Bingbing. To read the article, click here (World Financial Review’s layout includes a really good map); we’ve also appended the text (with links) below:

China Looks West: What Is at Stake in Beijing’s ‘New Silk Road’ Project

by Flynt Leverett, Hillary Mann Leverett, and Wu Bingbing

Not even two years into what will almost certainly be a ten-year tenure as China’s president, Xi Jinping has already had an impact on China’s foreign policy: standing up for what many Chinese see as their nation’s territorial sovereignty in maritime boundary disputes in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, proposing a “new model of great power relations” to guide relations with the United States, and presiding over the consolidation of what Xi himself calls a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Russia. But the most consequential diplomatic initiative of Xi’s presidency may turn out to be his calls to create a “New Silk Road Economic Belt” and a “Maritime Silk Road of the 21st Century”: vast infrastructure and investment schemes aimed at expanding China’s economic connections to—and its political influence across—much of Eurasia.

Successful implementation of Xi’s “one belt, one road” initiative is likely to be essential for China to meet some of its most pressing economic challenges. It is also likely to be critical to realizing the interest of many Chinese elites in a more “balanced” foreign policy—that is, in a diplomatic approach less reflexively accommodating of U.S. preferences—and in fostering a more genuinely multipolar international order.

Over 2,100 years ago, China’s Han dynasty launched what would become the original “Silk Road,” dispatching emissaries from the ancient capital of Xian in 138 BC to establish economic and political relations with societies to China’s west. For more than a millennium, the Silk Road of yore opened markets for silk and other Chinese goods as far afield as Persia—in the process extending Chinese influence across Central Asia into what Westerners would eventually come to call “the Middle East.”

In September 2013—just six months after becoming China’s president—Xi Jinping evoked this history in a speech at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University by proposing the creation of a “New Silk Road Economic Belt” running from western China across Central Asia. The following month, addressing Indonesia’s parliament, Xi suggested developing a complementary “Maritime Silk Road” to expand maritime connections and cooperation between China and Southeast Asia.

Xi’s proposals sparked a torrent of expert deliberations, policy planning exercises across China’s ministerial apparatus, and public discussion. Through these efforts, the initial concepts of the “New Silk Road Economic Belt” and the “Maritime Silk Road” have been elaborated into an integrated vision for expanding China’s economic connections not just to Central and Southeast Asia, but across South Asia, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East as well.

In recent months, Xi himself haslaid out at least five major elements of this “one belt, one road” vision:

–A key aspect is the development of connective infrastructure—high-speed rail lines, roads and highways, even Internet networks—linking western China with central Asia and, ultimately, with points beyond such as Iran and Turkey, even going as far as Europe. In parallel, construction of ports and related facilities will extend China’s maritime reach across the Indian Ocean and, via the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean basin. Over time, the New Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road will be interwoven through channels like the projectedChina-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor.

–This multifaceted development of connective infrastructure is meant to enable a second aspect of the “one belt, one road” strategy—expanding trade volumes between China and the vast Eurasian reaches to its West.

–Trade expansion will also be facilitated by a third aspect of the strategy—greater use of local currencies in cross-border exchange, facilitated by the growing number of currency swap arrangements between the People’s Bank of China and other national central banks. (In this regard, “one belt, one road” should reinforce Beijing’s ongoing campaign to promote renminbi as an international transactional and reserve currency.)

–Beyond these economic measures, a fourth aspect of the strategy emphasizes increased cultural exchange and people-to-people contact among countries involved in the “one belt, one road” project.

–Finally, the growth of cross-border exchange along the “New Silk Road Economic Belt” and “Maritime Silk Road” should be encouraged by intensified policy coordination among governments of participating states.

More specifically, a critical mass of political, policy, and business elites in China see the “one belt, one road” idea as critical to promoting more geographically balanced growth across all of China. Through thirty-five years of economic reform, development has been concentrated in the country’s eastern half. The New Silk Road Economic Belt, especially, is designed with a goal of jump-starting economic modernization in western China.

Beyond its impact inside China, the “one belt, one road” vision seeks to cultivate new export markets for Chinese goods and capital. For thirty-five years, advanced economies to China’s east—e.g., the United States and Japan—have been its most important economic partners and the most crucial outlets for its exports. Looking ahead, though, Chinese policymakers recognize that the potential for further growth in these markets is considerably smaller than in earlier phases of reform; they believe that, to compensate, China must nurture new export markets to its west.

Chinese analysts say that the territory encompassed by the New Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road contains 4.4 billion people (63 percent of the world’s population), with an aggregate GDP of $2.1 trillion (29 percent of the world’s aggregate wealth). But, for this zone to play the economic role envisioned by Chinese leaders, it is necessary to encourage development not only in western China, but in economies across Eurasia—another major goal of both the New Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road. It also means that, to be economically sustaining, these initiatives cannot be limited to areas contiguous to China. They must extend further westward, to include already more developed markets in eastern and southern Europe.

…and Strategic Rationales

Alongside these economic motives, Chinese interlocutors acknowledge that there are powerful strategic rationales for the “one belt, one road” approach. Certainly, the approach reflects Chinese leaders’ awareness of their country’s growing political as well as economic power; it also reflects the deepening of Chinese interests in strategically important regions to its west (e.g., the Persian Gulf).

In a regional context, the New Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road—like China’s recent championing of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building in Asia in the security sphere and its leadership on creating an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank—reflect Beijing’s increasingly evident assessment that Asian affairs should be managed more decisively by Asians themselves, not by extra-regional actors like the United States. More particularly, Chinese policymakers have framed their “one belt, one road” initiative as a response to the Obama administration’s much-hyped “pivot to Asia.”

Besides specific redeployments of U.S. military forces associated with American strategic rebalancing, Chinese elites increasingly see the United States engaged in economic, political, and military initiatives aimed at containing China’s rise as a legitimately influential player, in the Asia-Pacific region and globally. Sino-American rapprochement in the 1970s required Washington to abandon a failed quest for Asian hegemony, to realign relations with Beijing based on mutual accommodation of each side’s core interests, and to accept a more balanced distribution of power in Asia. Now, the United States appears to be backing away from these commitments and looking for ways to reassert a more traditionally hegemonic stance in Asia.

In the face of these trends, China is seeking to meet U.S. efforts to contain it to its east by expanding its diplomatic and political engagement to its west—including to areas like the Persian Gulf that Washington has long considered vital to America’s global position. To be sure, Beijing continues to rule out the possibility of military confrontation with the United States as in no way a rational prospect. But it also continues to seek a long-term transformation in the character of contemporary international relations—from an international system still shaped in large measure by unipolar American dominance to a more genuinely multipolar international order. To this end, the “one belt, one road” project could—if handled adroitly—prove a non-military catalyst that accelerates the relative decline of U.S. hegemony over the Persian Gulf and engenders a more balanced distribution of geopolitical influence in this strategically vital region.

Looking Ahead

Realizing the “one belt, one road” vision will pose serious and sustained tests for Chinese policymaking and diplomatic capabilities. Three such tests stand out as especially significant.

First, while one of the main motives for the New Silk Road Economic Belt is to encourage the development of western China—including the country’s Muslim-majority Xinjiang province—the Chinese government is increasingly concerned about the rising incidence of radicalization among some elements of Xinjiang’s Uighur Muslim population. Will Beijing be able to balance such concern against the imperatives of deepening China’s engagement with states in Central Asia, the Middle East, and other parts of the Muslim world?

Second, while “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Russia continues to be a prominent element in Chinese foreign policy, Moscow remains wary about any prospective increase in Chinese influence in former Soviet states whose participation is essential to implementing the “one belt, one road” approach. Will Beijing be able to maintain economically and strategically productive relations with Russia as it pursues this approach?

Third, while successful implementation of the New Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road initiatives can potentially contribute over the long term to a more balanced Sino-American relationship, getting them off the drawing board in anything more than preliminary fashion will almost certainly require Beijing to ignore U.S. displeasure on multiple fronts in the near-to-medium term.

A good example of this dynamic is how Chinese policymakers will engage Iran in the elaboration of the New Silk Road Belt and the Maritime Silk Road. Iran is comparatively unique among China’s prospective partners in that geography makes it important to the realization of both initiatives. Over the next few years, will Beijing continue to hold back from expanding economic and strategic cooperation with Tehran, in deference to U.S. preferences and (largely rhetorical) pressure? Or, to advance its “one belt, one road” vision, will China move more forthrightly to deepen relations with the Islamic Republic?

Trade-offs like these mean that how Beijing pursues this vision will almost certainly have a major bearing on the trajectory of Sino-American relations over the next decade and beyond. They also mean that Beijing’s relative success in forging a new Silk Road will do much to determine the extent to which China’s rise actually correlates with the emergence of a more truly multipolar international order in the 21st century.